Director Justine Bateman Wants To Use DOGE Savings To Make American Movies Great Again

Slash the Department of Education, privatize Medicaid and re-mortgage Yellowstone National Park. Do whatever you’ve got to do to find the taxpayer funds Justine Bateman needs for her latest project, a new federal department of greatly patriotic filmmaking. Bateman christened it The American Film Fund (TAFF), and she knows just the filmmaker to head it up: herself. Brilliant.

Bateman gave The Wrap this pitch last week, and it’s made serious industry news. Given a $100 million annual budget, she says she can produce five to seven films a years. These will be boldly patriotic films, and Academy-winning films like Anora. She says she will Make American Movies Great Again. These are lofty ambitions for b-picture budgets cranked out at a breakneck pace of one every two months.

It’s all too crazy, I do wonder if she’s joking. Bateman wields expert-level satire skills. Last November she took to X serving hilarious critiques of distraught Democrats reacting to Trump’s (re)election on Reels and Tiktok. She may be joking with us again, because the surface-level irony is unmistakable.

If the United States were to nationalize patriotic filmmaking, it wouldn’t be now. Budget tightening and smaller government are the political ethos of the day, and discretionary spending for the arts is always among the first line-item casualty of any budget crisis. Indeed, Bateman’s pitch comes as Congress must decide what it’ll do with an estimated $1 trillion in savings predicted by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency. She wants a piece of it.

Should we balance the budget and pay down the national debt? Or, should we secure social security for future generations? No! Let’s get our priorities straight and sign Justine Bateman to an unprecedented seven-picture deal with the federal government! We could nominate her The Secretary of Anti-UnAmerican Filmmaking, because that’s the role she’s scoping for herself.

She’s just not cut out for it. Justine is a bulldog defender of her art, and she will no-doubt object this opinion, but she is not a pop director of American film. She competently directs thought-provoking films that few outside festivals and art house circles ever see. Take Violet (2021) for example, a compelling film with an exceptional performance from Olivia Munn. Nobody saw it, though. Well, nobody but me and Richard Roeper. Far more have read Justine’s political commentary on X.

If Trump were to nationalize American filmmaking and relocate its cultural center from L.A. to the fastly-draining swamps of Washington D.C., he would not tap Justine Bateman to lead the migration. He would select someone with their finger on the pulse of Great American filmmaking! A substantial auteur like Mr. Beast, or an objective documentarian like Dinesh D’Souza would be the president’s first choices. Or, the ones he could get, anyway. Hollywood doesn’t like him.

Is Bateman trolling? Is this TAFF idea a headline-grabbing stunt to promote her upcoming no-AI film festival? Or is she crazy? Who knows! I’ll happily eat my sardonic skepticism should Bateman’s dream-deal with Trump’s White House come to fruition and The King of New York names her the Minister of Great American Filmmaking, handing her a $100-million commission. However, I won’t hesitate to critique her government-funded films, and I already suspect she’s oversold us on the goods.